1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a tent and, more particularly to a new tent that is especially designed for the needs of a bicyclist or mountain biker.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Light weight tents designed for backpackers are well known in the art. In known tents, the supporting rods are often two vertically arranged poles, e.g. in form of aluminum tubes being composed of discrete tube segments. The assembled poles are spanned to the ground by means of cords and pegs driven into the soil. In some tents the two vertical poles are linked by a crest rod. In both cases during construction of the tent a compromise has to be found with respect to the rod assembly between the demand that the built-up tent should stand stable under all weather conditions, e.g. high wind speeds, and the demand that the tent should require only a small packing volume and be of low weight.
Known rod assemblies have been unsatisfying, particularly under the last mentioned points of view, since the wall thickness and dimensions required to create a stable tent lead to a high weight. During transportation of a packed tent on a bicycle it is furthermore disadvantageous that the pole segments that comprise the rod assembly cannot be made of a very short length, because the higher number of joints required within the rod assembly weakens the structure and the time needed to set up the tent rises in an unreasonable relation. Therefore, bulky and awkwardly shaped parts have to be attached to and carried on the bicycle.
Generally, it is the object of any tent designer to construct a particular stable structure at a weight as low as possible as well as to minimize the volume of the packed tent as much as possible. This holds true particularly in all those cases where the tent has to be carried under extreme conditions by human muscle forces, e.g. in mountain bike hiking. On a bicycle storing space is very limited and for obvious reasons a tent to be carried on a bicycle should be as light weighted as possible.
Known from British patent application GB 2 228 500 is a tent using the frame of a bicycle and an air pump carried on said bicycle as supporting means or as a substitute for an rod assembly. According to this state of the art the bicycle, which should be of the type having a common diamond frame comprising a horizontal crossbar, is to be arranged perpendicularly to the principal plane of the erected tent and the pump is used as an additional means to support the tent awning in the principal plane of the erected tent. A drawback of this tent is the fact that it is very low due to the crossbar of the bicycle being the highest point and due to the fact that a standard air pump designed to be carried on the frame of a bicycle is too short to be used in a satisfying manner as a tent pole. Beside the low height of the crest lines of such a tent it turned out to be disadvantageous that the bicycle used as a substitute for a rod assembly is spanned indirectly via said bicycle pump and therefore insufficiently at least towards one side, so that the resulting shelter structure is comparatively unstable, particularly at high wind speeds.
Another drawback of the described state of the art is that the bicycle is left uncovered and is therefore subject to corrosion, particularly when the weather is rainy.